Quick note - Starbases, or more to the point *orbital* platforms.

A: The starbase 'logististical point' system should be on a sliding scale. Massive Starbases should 'cost' more logistical points than small base stations. Something as small as a sensor outpost should cost you no logistical points to build.

B: You should be able to build Orbital starbases - they would count as defending ships in orbit,  should cost relatively less logistical points than a starbase of the same size in deep space, and qualify (either automatically or with the correct upgrade as orbital command centers (unlimited, or at least larger, fleets in orbit). The starbase itself would have the same range and other assist advantages as another starbase of the same type - it effectively occupies the same position as the planet.

C: to build large starships should require an orbital facility (MOO got that right).Maintaining such a facility is of course a trade off in allocating space - a Starbase might be able (assist in) to manufacturing Battleships, but be relatively weak gun wise, in the same way you have to decide between engines, guns et al on ships.

D: Large starbases, requiring no movement, should be at least as powerful (if not far more so) than a ship of the same 'weight class' barring other considerations. It should take a fleet to take out even an undefended starbase (Okay, I can do it with a Stormbird in SFC II - but it takes awhile I can tell you! And Stormbird's are wonderfully munchkiny ships - {G}))

E: Whatever logistics points a starbase 'uses' from the grand total globally, it should more than compensate for locally. In deep space, the coordination required to fight battles in deep space is difficult. Within the range of a starbase, with a highly defended Command and Control system, sensors, long range weaponry, shielding and a colonel to bring you coffee? You should be able to coordinate a much larger fleet for the defense of the Rigellian Shipyards than for that little outpost at the edge of known space. Even if your fleet is not in orbit itself with the starbase, having the AI - 4500 "Devastator" battle computer synchrozize the fleets sensors, the starbase sensors, automaically cover weak points, et al means when you attack a fleet near a starbase, you are fighting the starbase as well.

All of which adds up, to *me* at least, to a more powerful defensive option, which is nonetheless copatible with the basic GC II scheme, has the same built in limitations as starbase logisitics may demand, and can be overcome by a sufficiently determined opponent.

Any thoughts? - Jonnan

It's been a long time, but I remember Combat Mission having a strong tactical-combat AI.  It might just have been because I sucked at TBS at the time I played it, but I don't think it was entirely my fault.

Now, I'm not saying it's good enough to beat a decent player, but ultimately if it's good enough to provide a challenge, that's all I'd ask for.  Though I do understand the "player exploit" angle.

Without tactical combat, using mixed fleets with support modules would still work if the AI could competently handle them, but asking the AI to understand the player's unique mix of modules would be asking a bit much.

Note that this is distinct from asking the AI to understand its own pre-determined mixes of modules, which is easily doable.

We-Go is just the term for turn-based games where both sides' queued actions happen simultaneously (again, see Combat Mission).  So both players queue up their moves at the same time, and when both players have hit the "Turn" button the queued moves of both players run at the same time.

Well bottom line, this was said from a blog Draginol that I found searching google, which was stated by him back in 2008 (some 6 months or so ago):

So they will be implementing multiplayer, planetary development will actually not be a jumble of stuff the AI throws in there, and there will be (as an option) TACTICAL BATTLES! YEA!

I guess you can turn it off, so it will work similar to how GC2 does now, just weapons and defense with nothing more. But when it comes to tactical battles, here is the definition:

MILITARY TACTICS: are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Also seen as the art of organizing an army.

Also: Tactics – 1. The employment of units in combat.
2. The ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other and/or to the enemy in order to use their full potentialities.
3. The employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, and the enemy in order to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements.

So just from various definitions of what Tactical Battles actually means, I would have to assume that they will employ some of the ideas relating to military units that have already been discussed by us in the past week or so. Most likely I would think that this would include the use of Combined Forces.

Here was where I found this particular statement from Draginol by:
http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/322138/The_future_of_Galactic_Civilizations

The best news, is that it is OPTIONAL! So those who don't care to use the additional tactical options, or prefer not to mess with all the military mumbo-jumbo, don't have to.

Of course, this is no gaurentee of what will end up in the final game, but is the only info I could find that seems to be somewhat official. As far as multiplayer goes, I was completely unaware they ever intended to add this into the game, I am somewhat shocked.

Why does it have to be all of one or all of the other? Let's say you want to go to war with someone. You can go full-on offense, and assume that no enemy offensive ships will get past your blockades. If your assumptions are wrong, you're going to lose worlds.

If defense is sufficiently strong, everyone is going to want some minimal level of protection. That's why your "remove the orbit cap" doesn't work; it requires you to invest too much into static defense around a single world to make defense meaningful.

Minimal defenses are your protection against a fast-strike. They keep your enemy honest; in order to take your planet, they need to be serious about it. They can't just throw a unit or two at it and get it for free; they're going to have to work for it.

Those who choose not to have this minimal protection gain a slight economic advantage, at the potential cost of losing worlds. There should be varying degrees of defense, each degree requiring more and more economy to build and maintain. Yes, there should be a breaking point where the defense isn't worth it. But in GC2, that breaking point is one ship; it's never worthwhile to have a ship on (static) defense.

No, that's actually terrible news. People think that being able to switch something on and off is good for a game. It isn't; options always have a cost.

Balance requires knowing what all the factors are. You can't effectively make a balancing decisions without knowing all of the minutae that goes into that balance. If those details change, if the user can decide what those details are, it is not very hard to get into situations where things work when the option is set one way, and not when it is set another way.

For example, there is an entire Super Ability devoted to making colonizing of certain hazardous worlds easier. This ability is meaningless if you turn such worlds off. A simple option screws up the balance. But it can screw things up in more significant ways too.

What if the idea behind having hazardous worlds was so that the overall pacing of the game would be broken up by a mini-colony rush, one that could be initiated by whomever felt the need to expand. That is, it's an alternative means of expanding after the colony rush without having to go to war. It allows a wily player to come back from behind by keeping the big boys squablling, while he goes off and takes some choice territory.

If that strategy were important to the overall balance of the game, being able to turn it off has an affect on game balance.

Note that this example is about something that was added to the game in an expansion. Combat is absolutely fundamental to the game; putting an imbalance there is the kiss of death.

A good tactical combat system is about as far removed from "bigger number wins" as it gets. Fleet composition, special effect modules, relative ship sizes, maneuvering; all of these should play a part in a good tactical combat system.

Such a complex system is necessarily difficult-to-impossible to simulate well. If the simulation AI isn't as good at combat as the player could be, then you create a fundamental imbalance. The player who decides to play the battles has an economic advantage. So you can either play through these battles and spend less on military, or spend less time on something that you don't particularly like, but have a harder time playing the game overall.

This gets even worse when combined with multiplayer. Do I dare pit a mere AI against a human? So now, I have to fight each tactical battle, even if I don't want to. That will make multiplayer games drag on even more than they would anyway.

As I mentioned before, a good tactical combat system requires a lot of front-work care and feeding. Proper fleet composition and all of that. That's just what you need to do to get your fleet to the battle. So, it creates this incredible complexity in ship and fleet development. This is very annoying for the person who's simulating tactical combat, because he's got to deal with this complexity that a more simplified combat system, like one used for non-tactical combat TBSs, would not have required.

It's a big can of worms. Oh, you can certainly make a TBS that has optional tactical combat. But will your game be better off overall for doing so than taking one road over another?

The best way to do this is to effectively make two separate games. Make the main game non-tactical, and then release an expansion that changes everything: resourcing models, tech trees, etc. That version would require tactical battles (possibly with a simulation option for fights that truly don't matter). Such a game would focus more on combat, so there would be fewer victory conditions.

There's a fundamental problem with that. A military victory, pretty much by definition, means that you own most of the worlds in the galaxy. The other victory conditions don't require this. So long as score increases with the number of planets you have, that will be the best way to increase your score.

Initially I was thinking of tactical combat in a different manner, whereas actually it COULD end up being combat exactly like GC2, just that the player will actually control the battle... ? Turning that option off would just be a disadvantage to the player (unless that player was just absolutely terrible). And to destroy a Starbase that had 900 hitpoints with a 1 Attack Star Fury, you would have to shoot it 'manually' 900 times (900 clicks). ha...

That alone will make you constantly go back and forth to the menu to constantly turn it off and on. And especially since in GC2 it is pretty uncommon to have fights that actually end up pretty close, most are mismatched, you don't need tactical combat for any of those. Then turn tactical combat back on with a fight you would normally lose, so you can win it.

 <----- turns into ------>

I really like the idea of logistics requirements decreasing as you get closer to your planets. In fact, let's go a step further, and make attack, defense, and HP increase as well, and decrease sharply the further you get into enemy territory. This will prevent players at war from simply finding a "core" planet and taking it out to score a cheap victory. If you tried that under my system, you would be so weak by the time you got there that you wouldn't stand a chance.

It also means I have nothing but your assurance that this is true. I have no direct information about the relative defensive orientation of the games.

My biggest concern is that you are moving the game into the passive aggressiveness of Axis and Allies, where the defensive advantage was so great that the first person to attack in a major battle generally lost the game. This led to massive defensive build ups and, after dozens of turns of staring over a border, the person with the slightly better economy had enough tanks to cut through the defender's massive infantry pile.

The games I've played with optional combat involved a choice at the beginning of each combat, and generally a "delegate" option available even during combat. Do the hard part, then walk away while the AI cleans up for you.

And it's not usually a matter of controlling only the really close battles, it's controlling the battles where you can get hurt. PTO II allowed a competent person to take on battleship fleets with destroyers and not only not lose ships, but never even take a hit - all due to the predictability of the AI. One of the private challenges I gave myself in that game was to take over as Japan in April 1945 and beat the Americans without losing a ship. It's not actually that hard, because I can rip apart any fleet they throw at me and they never get to fire back. Turn off battle control, and it's impossible to win at all.

Just to throw this in here, it's still around 2 years until GC3 release... such a long time! Maybe they should just scrap Elemental and start on GC3 now! (J/K! Especially since Elemental is the engine for GC3). I might be broke by then if Obama's stimulus plan doesn't work, since Biden says there is a 30% chance of failure.. so odds are with me!

"So your saying there's a chance!"

True, that is why I would make the decrease, very slight, if even preasent, in neutral space. The big cuts would appear if you entered the influence space of an enemy who had declared war on you.

EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "a decrease in HP", I do not mean taking damage. I mean your max HP would decrease, but the same % of your health would remain. There are some problems with that that I am unsure how to resolve, so I may just take the HP part out.

Boy am I glad I won't have to worry about finding a job until maybe 4 years from now...

Such as if your ship has 1 hp left, you are far from home, and declare war on an enemy (while in his AoI), you would essentially destroy your own ship .

haha.. it's actually not funny, but oh well.. , I wasn't at any means rich then either, I was a contracted employee before, but that went kaploop... so now, well since the government is pushing wellfare, maybe I'll hop in on the bandwagon! J/K! Enough with politics, I see so much of it on TV, I actually I had a nightmare about Politicians (aka, the Snathi) chasing me around!

Haha.. hoarding their proverbial nuts.

On a more serious note, I would like to see a revamp of the requirements system to allow different types of requirement. i.e. some starship components would require improvements, some techs would require resorces, some starbase modules would require a special type of constuctor, and so on. Don't just have techs unlock improvements, ships, and modules, and have techs all be researchable without any requirements.

Nice one Scout!!!

I had a great idea based on starbases in orbit.

I'm also trying to divert the focus away from the whole combat system argument.

If only for a minuite. So here's my idea......

There should still be a cap on how many ships you can have in orbit around a planet. But if you were to build an orbital starbase (economic, influence, whatever), it would increase that cap by +5 up to +10.

And the starbase would also affect the planet  with it's bonuses (such as an economic starbase, it would boost planetary income on the planet, not to mention any trade routes attached to would also generate more cash).

There might also be a max cap on how many of them you are allowed to build in orbit (like 5 maybe).

But eitherway, they would be a great help no matter what.

And do you know how annoying it is to build 20 maxed out economic starbases along a trade route just to generate more income?

It still wouldn't replace those kind of starbases, but it would help eitherway, so that you could build 5 economic starbases in orbit, they would have all the economic and military modules built in (so that they could be able to defend themselves and any ships in orbit at the same time), and apart from that, you could still be able to build those 20 starbases going along that trade route (maxed out too) and be able to bring in an awsome amount of BC from that!!!

They should also incorporate a new manufacturing only starbase into GalCiv3. It would boost production on planets, and if it was built in orbit around one, it would greatly speed up ship building (not to mention social building). So you could have honest to god Shipyard planets.

It would be amazing.

Anticipating replies. Feel free to mention anything that I forgot to!!!

Let's Rage!!!